Essentially, she's encouraging people to be with that person in their emotions, and reflect back what that person is feeling to them. This allows the patient to feel listened to, something that they may never experience anywhere else. She's encouraging us that this is important and whether or not you feel qualified to help, just doing this can make a huge difference.
Q: Do you use medications in our practice?
A: As a GP, I do prescribe medications because I've seen how powerfully they can help people to be able to act in more healthy ways when they're completely unable to do so without that aid.
New Guest: a pain management dude, a doctor too.
Q: What is pain?
A: Not just a sensation. It is both a biological and a psychological phenomenon. It is an emotion in the sense that it also demands a response.
Q: What happens in the human brain when we experience pain?
A: You may expect to see a single area as the 'pain area' of the brain, but heaps of areas of the brain light up. Some of them are ones that try to perceive where the pain's coming from, but most of them are areas that we associate with emotions.
When you see someone else who looks like they're in pain, your own brain's pain areas light up too. That empathy has a brain activity reality.
Q: What of this is uniquely human?
A: We share a lot with any organism. The difference with us is a lot of the cognitive areas, probably language. The areas that look at the future, "what's going to happen if this keeps on going?".
Q: What things does pain produce in people, and how do you help them?
A: Depression, anger and fear. Chronic pain is an incredibly depressing experience. People often have a very deep hole that's difficult to fill and you often get very involved in that. Some people are worried that in 5 years they'll end up in a wheelchair. Anger is very common, often targetted at the medical sector.
Q: how do you help them?
A: A lot of it is medication, but massively increasing is the cognitive therapies. This is now the most common way of treating pain. Some are moving beyond that, and some people are looking into spiritual aspects.
Q: How are you reacting to talking about spirituality in this area while in a secular environment?
A: There are lots of people interested in it. Having said that, it's very hard to pin down what people think it means by it. The question ends up being, "What is your meaning, your purpose, and how has that been affected by pain?" Even from this loose sort of view, it does seem to tap in.
Q: What do evolutionary biologists make of the phenomenon of chronic pain?
A: Acute pain makes evolutionary sense, but chronic pain and particularly phantom pain makes no sense. it throws up quite a few conundrums from that point of view.
Q: How do you think about the papers that map the brain for the areas that respond to religious experience and use it to say that this means it's all in the mind, especially things that
A: I don't see how recognising what receptors get turned on demonstrates the reality
New girl, a 3rd year PhD student.
Q: What is meta-ethics?
A:
Q: What are philosophers in your area saying about emotions?
A: In moral psychology, they look at the relationship of reasoning with emotions, how emotions help or hinder them. Jonathon Height(sp?) has done experiments that say that emotions are unhelpful in ethical reasoning. Other things such as virtue ethics say that the reasoning behind your action is what defines the morality of the action.
Q: How do emotions connect with virtue ethics?
A: When we think of virtues, we think of courage, or compassion, etc. We usually associate these with a certain emotion that is going on in the display of that virtue.
Q: What's problematic with virtue ethics?
A: Not so much a problem with virtues as concepts. Useful to talk about in moral philosophy. The problem is if it's seen as the primary concept in determining what's ethical. Yet, deontic ethicists will purely look at the act itself to determine its ethical value.
Q: how is an objective basis for morality possible, given our inherent subjectivity as humans?
A: If you think that objective values exist, and are perceivable, then they must in some way perceivable via our emotions. You can't tell by your eyes that a painting is beautiful, it's the emotion where you'll find the criteria based.
Q (Andrew Cameron): Is 'mental anguish' pain in the sense that physically sensed pain is?
A: (Phil - pain dude) - It's hard to tell. Even from the brain scans. I'd say it's a false distinction and there aren't many differences between them.
Q: How do you deal with people who suffocate their pain and don't acknowledge it? (you know they've experienced it because it comes out in all sorts of harmful behavioural cycles)
A: A key is allowing them to understand that there's something going on back there, so ...
Ran out of puff. No more blogging for a bit...